The news first broke on Deadline and later reported by Reuters and hinted at before confirmation by Variety. According to Mike Fleming at Deadline:

I’ve just learned that Sony Pictures is making a hefty deal to acquire feature rights to Steve Jobs, the upcoming authorized biography by former CNN chairman and Time Magazine managing editor Walter Isaacson. I’m hearing the deal is $1 million against $3 million and that Mark Gordon will be the biopic’s producer. But this will be an MG360 project, which is the movie production partnership between Gordon and Management 360. ICM reps both Isaacson and Gordon. Sony Pictures would not comment.

RELATED: Stephen Colbert Fondly Recalls Getting Free Apple Products In Tribute To Steve Jobs

Fleming notes that it seems like a natural fit for the story, as Sony produced the Academy Award-winning The Social Network. As the rights appear to have been acquired merely hours ago, there are no further developments, but Deadline also notes this interesting factoid: Jobs has been profiled in film before, played by ER actor Noah Wyle:

At the time of Jobs’ death, only one movie had ever chronicled his rise to tech titan: Pirates Of Silicon Valley, a semi-humorous docudrama about the two visionaries behind Microsoft and Apple based on the book Fire In The Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger & Michael Swaine. Shown on TNT in 1999, the telefilm starred Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates and Noah Wyle as Jobs.

RELATED: Rush Limbaugh Gives A Surprisingly Touching And Heartfelt Remembrance Of Steve Jobs

Read the full post at Geekosystem.

On the one hand, Sunday NYT powerhouse Frank Rich thinks she’s “the most important brand in American politics after Barack Obama” (which is a measure of the lack of the G.O.P. as much as anything) and here to stay. On the other, Maureen Dowd, typically thinks Obama needs less Spock and more Palin.

Meanwhile, I think Andrew Sullivan may have actually gone rogue in his coverage of Palin; after shutting down his blog so he could read the book, he’s now calling her a “religious icon of sorts.” Perhaps, Sullivan should consider taking the advice of Liz Cheney, another up and coming star of the G.O.P., who has apparently looked into the Palin future and doesn’t like what she sees. On yesterday’s This Week Cheney reminded George Stephanopolous that there were other far more important concerns in this world: “whether we walk away from Afghanistan in defeat matters much more in the long-term than how many books anybody sells.”

Cheney’s comments came during a round table discussion (video below) about the Rogue phenomenon during which George Will dismissively reminded the world that “she’s selling lots of books, that’s not politics” (though, as Obama can attest to, it certainly can’t hurt!). Whereas, Walter Isaacson appeared to express some admiration for her ability to sell those books “those of us who write books and then go on tour and try and sell those books can’t help but admire the wonderfulness of this.” Isaacson also believes Lou Dobbs will be running for president, possibly on the back of future book sales.

Perhaps the real question is not what we will “do” about Palin but how much Palin, herself, can do before we exhaust all interest in talking and reading about her. We are only beginning week two.

Back then, hearing the news of a VP selection by text message made us all giddy; hours of cable news time was spent pondering the hubris of Greek pillars at Invesco Field; Hurricane Gustav was threatening to wipe the whole GOP event off the map; and the country was about to be introduced to a little-known politician who showed enormous promise named Sarah Palin. Wow.

PHOTOGALLERY: 2008 CONVENTIONS

Through it all, a cadre of journos, news execs, pundits in TV makeup, upstart bloggers and jockeying political operatives had gotten used to each other’s faces on the campaign trail, through stops in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, Super Tuesday and more, with their speeches, rallies, debates, spin rooms, hoe-downs, barbecues, fundraisers, black-tie dinners, arugula, waffles, shots of JD, the thrill of final victory and the bitter, bitter pall of defeat. In August-September 2008, it all converged into one Mega-Week (give or take a few days of travel time) as the whole gang plus everyone else who could score some couch space converged on Denver and Minneapolis/St. Paul. It was lots of work but lots of fun — like sleepaway camp for politicos. So – if you’re bored and nostaligic on this sleepy summer long weekend, you’re in luck — I took the best of my 600+ photos from last year and winnowed it down to the very best of the bunch, for some golden Kodak moments featuring any and all of — in no particular order — Joe Scarborough, Joe Klein, Mika Brzezinski, Arianna Huffington, Jake Weisberg, Dana Milbank, Luke Russert, Kevin Madden, Mark Salter, Ana Marie Cox, Jon Klein, Anderson Cooper, Rick Stengel, Mary Katherine Ham, Chuck Todd, Betsy Fischer, Trent Lott, John Roberts, Laura Ingraham, Jonah Goldberg, Patrick Gavin, Rick Klein, Tucker Carlson, Amy Argetsinger, Norah O’Donnell, Pat Buchanan, Ryan Lizza, Joel Stein, Walter Isaacson, Courtney Hazlett, Keli Goff, Chris Cillizza, Mike Isikoff, Alan Cumming, Jason Jones, Samantha Power, Cass Sunstein, Carly Fiorina, Larry Page, Henry Kissinger, Chad Hurley, Jon Hamm, John Dickerson, Obama Girl, Ari Melber, Josh Green, Joan Walsh, Ron Brownstein, Matt Cooper, Fred Armisen, will.i.am, Markos Moulitsas, Chevy Chase, Tammy Haddad, Lynn Sweet, Karen Tumulty, Ben Smith, John Oliver, Karl Rove, David Carr, Kathleen Sebelius, Sammy Hagar, Rahm Emanuel, Katie Couric, Peggy Noonan and various people eating free food at the CNN Grill. Was that just a blatant attempt at showing up in all of your Google alerts? Perhaps. But still, the pics are pretty fun. Check them out here — and happy Labor Day Weekend!

PHOTOGALLERY: 2008 CONVENTIONS

Collectively, the participants at this year’s forum represent thousands of newspapers, radio stations and television channels–meaning the corridor conversations at the conference could translate to sweeping strategic changes in American media.

It’s an ambitious agenda – you can follow it on Twitter at the #FOCAS09 hashtag, or watch below, or see an actual excerpt of said ambitious agenda below that. It’s on autopilot right now, but during the writing of this post we were favored with cameos from Craig Newmark, the IHT’s Michael Oreskes and someone whose name escaped me but who doesn’t seem to hold with this Twitter thing — he kept on talking about “the care and feeding of the superstars,” which I imagine would probably not sit well with some bloggers. His superstar of choice was Jim Fallows, whom he mentioned frequently. Catch up below:

We’ve got an excerpt of the agenda on the next page. They’re keeping these people busy in exchange for their fancy Aspen digs!

]]> http://www.mediaite.com/online/livestream-saving-journalism-in-aspen/feed/ 0 http://www.mediaite.com/print/whitewashing-kissinger-by-dissing-watergate-the-economist-isnt-buying-it/ http://www.mediaite.com/print/whitewashing-kissinger-by-dissing-watergate-the-economist-isnt-buying-it/#comments Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:25:24 +0000 Willard C. Rappleye Jr. http://www.mediaite.com/?p=7206 Washington Post, which published the scoops of that would eventually take down a president. But the July 17th issue of the Economist points to a more unorthodox take: That the Washington Post was selfish, irresponsible, and directly responsible for thwarting the World Peace that Richard Nixon would certainly have won.]]> Historians generally agree that Watergate was a great, shining moment for the press – and for the Washington Post, which published the scoops of that would eventually take down a president. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have made careers out of it; Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman added it to theirs, as have countless authors and scholars.

But the July 17th issue of the Economist points to a more unorthodox take: That the Washington Post was selfish, irresponsible, and directly responsible for thwarting the World Peace that Richard Nixon would certainly have won.

Huh?

In an otherwise laudatory review of a new book, Kissinger: 1973, The Crucial Year, by Alistair Horne, a distinguished British historian, The Economist’s reviewer found a stunning denial of one of journalism’s historic triumphs:

“The author’s worst failing is his total misunderstanding of Watergate. He interprets it as self-interested irresponsibility on the part of the Washington Post, exploited by Democratic politicians for partisan purposes. For him, their frivolity robbed the world of peace made possible by Mr. Nixon’s flawed strategic genius and Mr. Kissinger’s brilliant diplomacy.

When Americans speak of Watergate, they are referring not only to the break-in at the Watergate building, but the whole course of illegal behaviour that Mr Nixon encouraged to improve his chances of winning the 1972 election. This was paranoid folly; he would have won anyway. Far from being wrong, it was brave and public-spirited of the Washington Post to investigate conduct that threatened the integrity of American democracy.”

It’s a fairly extraordinary claim, and oddly, one that escaped the notice of Jacob Heilbrunn when he reviewed the book for the New York Times the weekend before last. What Heilbrunn did note, interestingly, was that Horne may have been perceived as a biographer more inclined to see things in Kissinger’s favor:

Kissinger has always been acutely sensitive to criticism, and he miscalculated by providing Walter Isaacson full access for a 1992 biography, which was supposed to counterbalance Seymour Hersh’s withering 1983 account, “The Price of Power.” It didn’t. Then came Christopher Hitchens’s “Trial of Henry Kissinger” (2001). Turning to two British historians with conservative pedigrees must have seemed the prudent way to restore order: Horne explains that in 2004 he met with Kissinger, whom he has known for almost three decades, and proposed confining himself to 1973, thereby allowing the equally prolific Niall Ferguson, who extolled Kissinger last year in The Times Literary Supplement, to work unmolested on a forthcoming official life.

If, indeed, Horne was favorably disposed to paint Kissinger in a flattering light, this is indeed an extreme example. I’ll let the Economist have the last word: “To believe that but for the irresponsibility of the Washington Post and the Ervin Committee he would have bequeathed the world a generation of world peace, is too much.”

Related:
A year to remember [The Economist]
Got Your Back [NYT]
Excerpt: Kissinger: 1973, the Crucial Year [NYT]

Bill Rappleye has spent the last 60-plus years in journalism. Read more about him here.